Description
Voice: Call- A sharp tittering heard chiefly when the birds are disporting themselves of an evening, pattering along the water, half running half swimming, with rapid vibrations of their stumpy wings and chasing one another around.

A drab coloured, plump and squat little water bird with silky white underparts, short pointed bill, and no tail. In breeding plumage head and neck dark brown and chestnut, upper plumage slightly paler. Yellow swollen gape than conspicuous. Sexes alike. Pairs or parties, on jheels, village tanks, rain-filled ditches and ponds, etc.

Habits: A good swimmer and expert diver. Vanishes below the surface with astounding rapidity, leaving scarcely a ripple behind. When fired at with a shot gun, the bird has often dived before the charge can reach it! Normally sedentary, but is capable of flying strongly and for long distances on its diminutive wings when forced by drought to change its habitation.

Nesting: Season- ranging principally between April and October. Nest- a rough pad of sodden weeds and rushes on floating vegetation or a raft of debris, oftern half submerged. Eggs-3 to 5, white but soon becoming brown-stained through contact with the sodden weeds with which the bird usually covers them up before leaving the nest in alarm or to feed.

Gupta RC, Kaushik TK and Gupta PK (2012) WINTER MIGRATORY WETLAND BIRDS IN HARYANA ARE
CONFRONTING ADVERSE CONDITIONS IN RURAL PONDS
Resulting in reduction in arrival number: A case study of village Amin in Thanesar block in Kurukshetra district
Indian Journal of Fundamental and Applied Life Sciences 2 (1) 7pp Available at - http://www.cibtech.org/J%20LIFE%20SCIENCES/PUBLICATIONS/2012/Vol%202%20No%201/1-002%20Gupta-Migratory.pdf

Pawar SM, Ganeshwade RM and Sonawane SR (2010) Avian fauna along three water reservoir from Satara district (Maharashtra), India The Bioscan 5(4) 609-612pp Available at - http://thebioscan.in/Journals_PDF/5419-%20S.%20M.%20PAWAR.pdf